The Scottish Labour Party (Scottish Gaelic: Pàrtaidh Làbarach na h-Alba, Scots: Scots Labour Pairty;[7] often branded Scottish Labour) is the section of the Labour Party which operates in Scotland. Until 1994 it was called the Scottish Council of the Labour Party.

In the 2007 Scottish Parliament election Labour fell back to become the second largest party, with a lower share of the vote and with one fewer seat than the Scottish National Party (SNP), who subsequently formed a minority government. It fell back further but remained the second largest party after the 2011 Scottish Parliament election while the SNP advanced to form the first majority government since devolution began, in 1999. The woes of the 2011 Scottish election were compounded by a landslide defeat in the 2015 UK general election when it was reduced to a single member in Scotland, losing 40 of 41 seats to the SNP. It was the first time the party had not won a UK general election in Scotland since 1959[9] and the least seats won in a General Election in Scotland since the party was formed in 1900.

Scottish general secretary

The current Scottish general secretary is Ian Price, who succeeded Colin Smyth in 2013.[10]

Headquarters

The Scottish Labour headquarters is currently at Bath Street, Glasgow. It was formerly co-located with the offices of Unite the Union at John Smith House, 145 West Regent Street.

Conference

The party holds an annual conference during February/March each year.

Membership

Scottish Labour Party membership since 1997 Labour Party full members (excluding affiliates and supporters)

5,000

10,000

15,000

20,000

25,000

30,000

1997

2008

2010

2015

In 2008, Scottish Labour Party membership was reported as 17,000, down from a peak of approximately 30,000 in the run-up to the 1997 general election.[11] The figures included in the Annual Report presented to the Scottish Party Conference in 2008, also recorded that more than half of all Constituency Labour parties (CLPs) had less than 300 members, with 14 having less than 200 members.[12]

In September 2010, the party issued 13,135 ballot papers to party members during the Labour Party (UK) leadership election. These did not necessarily equate to 13,135 individual members – due to the party's electoral structure, members can qualify for multiple votes.[13] The party has declined to reveal its membership figures since 2008, and did not publish the number of votes cast in the leadership elections of 2011 or 2014, only percentages.[14]

In November 2014 the party's membership was claimed by an unnamed source reported in the Sunday Herald to be 13,500.[15] Other recent reports in the media have quoted figures of "as low as 8,000" (the Evening Times) [16] and "less than 10,000" (New Statesman).[17] In December 2014 the newly elected leader Jim Murphy claimed that the figure was "about 20,000" on the TV programme Scotland Tonight.[18]

According to the accounts it submitted to the Electoral Commission the party had an income from membership of £115,636 in 2013, the most recent year for which figures have been published.

In late September 2015, following a membership boost resulting from the 2015 Labour leadership election, a total of 29,899 people were associated with the party; 18,824 members, 7,790 people affiliated through trade unions and other groups, and 3,285 registered supporters.[3]

In April 2000, Dewar was admitted to hospital for tests on his heart, following a previous test in which a minor irregularity had been discovered. The following month, he had surgery to repair a leaking heart valve, and was forced to take a three-month break from Parliament, with Deputy First MinisterJim Wallace taking over as Acting First Minister. On 10 October 2000, Dewar sustained a fall. He seemed fine at first but later that day suffered a massive cerebral haemorrhage which was possibly triggered by the anticoagulant medication he was taking after the heart surgery. Donald Dewar died the following day in Edinburgh's Western General Hospital.

On 27 October 2000, a fortnight after Dewar's death, Henry McLeish was elected as Leader of Scottish Labour, defeating rival Jack McConnell. McLeish resigned the following year amid a scandal involving the renting of his constituency office and allegations of financial wrongdoings. McLeish felt his resignation would allow the Scottish Labour Party a clean break to prepare for the 2003 Parliamentary elections.

After McLeish's resignation, Jack McConnell quickly emerged as the only candidate, and was elected First Minister by the Parliament on 22 November 2001.

2007 Scottish Parliament elections and aftermath

In the run-up to the 2007 Scottish Parliament general election, McConnell was criticised by many inside and outside of the Labour party for his role in the party's poor start to the campaign, with Labour solidly behind the Scottish National Party (SNP) in many opinion polls. On 10 April, McConnell unveiled Scottish Labour's election manifesto, which included plans to scrap (?) bills for pensioners and reform Council Tax. The manifesto also proposed a large increase in public spending on education, which would allow for the school leaving age to be increased to 18 and reduce average class sizes to 19 pupils.

McConnell's ruling Labour Party was defeated by the SNP, both in terms of the popular vote and number of seats. The SNP won 47 seats in the new parliament, whilst the Labour Party won 46, thus securing them a one-seat majority over Labour, but still well short of a majority of the parliament. On 15 August 2007, McConnell announced his intention to resign as Scottish Labour leader.

On 17 August 2007, Wendy Alexander formally launched her campaign for the leadership of the Labour Party in Holyrood. As the only candidate, Alexander was installed as leader of the Labour group in the Scottish Parliament on 14 September 2007. That same year, a funding scandal developed after it emerged that she had accepted an illegal donation from Paul Green, a property magnate, a matter that was investigated by the Electoral Commission. Further newspaper reports on 30 November indicated Alexander was aware of the identity of the donor, after having sent a personal letter of gratitude to Mr Green (at his home in the tax haven of Jersey) concerning the donation. Accepting a donation from someone who is not registered on the UK electoral roll is illegal under electoral law, and is subject to criminal prosecution. However, the Electoral Commission concluded in February 2008 that Alexander had taken 'significant steps' to comply with funding regulations and decided not to refer the matter to the Procurator Fiscal. In a separate development, a few days earlier in February 2008, the standards watchdog for Scotland reported Wendy Alexander to the Procurator Fiscal for failing to publicly declare campaign donations.

During a TV interview on 4 May 2008, Wendy Alexander performed a major U-turn on previous Scottish Labour Party's policy by seeming to endorse a referendum on Scottish independence, despite previously refusing to support any referendum on the grounds that she did not support independence. During a further TV interview on 6 May 2008 she reiterated this commitment to a referendum and claimed that she had the full backing of current British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The following day, Gordon Brown denied this was Labour policy and that Wendy Alexander had been misrepresented during Prime Minister's Questions in Westminster. Despite this lack of backing, Wendy Alexander once again reiterated her commitment to a referendum during First Minister's Questions in the Scottish Parliament.

On 28 June 2008, Wendy Alexander announced her resignation as Leader of the Scottish Labour Party as a result of the pressure on her following the donation scandal. Cathy Jamieson subsequently became interim leader of the Scottish Labour Party.

2008 Glasgow East by-election

In late June 2008, David Marshall, MP for the Glasgow East (Glasgow Shettleston) constituency since 1979, resigned on health grounds. The resignation was sudden, however the seat was the 3rd safest Labour seat in the country and at the Westminster general election in 2005, Labour had a 13,057 majority over second placed SNP. In the resultant by-election on 24 July 2008, SNP candidate, serving Glasgow City Council member John Mason managed a spectacular 22.5% swing in the nationalists' favour to win the seat.

On 13 September 2008, Iain Gray was elected leader and promised a "fresh start" for Labour in Scotland.

2008 Glenrothes by-election

On 13 August 2008, Labour Member of Parliament (MP) for Glenrothes in Fife, John MacDougall died, triggering a by-election in a constituency that neighboured both the constituency of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Gordon Brown, and the constituency of Dunfermline and West Fife that had been won by the Liberal Democrats in a by-election in 2006. In the event, Labour held the parliamentary seat, increasing their vote by 3.2%. Lindsay Roy became Labour MP for the constituency, on 7 November 2008, defeating the SNP's candidate, Peter Grant, current council leader in Fife, in what was viewed by many as a surprise. Grant had been widely fancied to take the seat and after their stunning success in Glasgow East the SNP were disappointed. The voting was: Lindsay Roy, Labour, 19,946; Peter Grant, SNP 13,209. The Conservative Party which came 3rd with 1,381 votes, the Liberal Democrats with 947 votes and four other candidates lost their deposits.[19]

2010 UK general election

On 6 May 2010, contrary to polls preceding the election, Labour consolidated their vote in Scotland, losing no seats (despite losing 91 seats across the rest of Britain) and recovering Glasgow East from the SNP. This resulted in incumbent Scottish secretary Jim Murphy stating that the result provided an impetus for Scottish Labour to attempt to become "the biggest party in Holyrood" in the 2011 Scottish Parliament elections.[20]

After the Glenrothes election, controversy and speculation mounted after it was revealed the voting register had gone missing and an unusual number of postal votes.[21]

2011 Scottish Parliament election

The Scottish Labour Party lost seven seats compared to the notional 2007 result although its share of the constituency vote declined by less than 1%. Party leader Iain Gray, who held on to his own seat by only 150 votes, announced that he would be resigning with effect from later in the year.

2011 Inverclyde by-election

The seat of Inverclyde was held by David Cairns until his death on 9 May 2011. The resulting by-election held on 30 June, was won comfortably with a 5,838 majority by Scottish Labour candidate Iain McKenzie despite several high profile campaign visits by SNP First Minister, Alex Salmond and the SNP coming within 511 votes of winning the nearest equivalent seat in the Holyrood elections a matter of weeks previously. Coupled with the 2010 UK General Election results, this suggests that Scottish Labour's disappointing performance in the 2011 Scottish Parliament Election does not necessarily translate into support for its political opponents in other elections.

2011 Murphy/Boyack Review

Following the 2011 Scottish election, Ed Miliband commissioned a review of the future structure and operation of the Labour Party in Scotland, co-chaired by Jim Murphy MP and Sarah Boyack MSP.

In December 2012, Scottish Labour announced that they would be running their own campaign alongside Better Together to "continue articulating [their] vision for a better Scotland in education and in health".[24] This would be comparable to the "Conservative Friends of the Union" campaign started by the Conservative Party, and would likely not be recognised as an official campaign organisation by the Electoral Commission. This was eventually revealed to be the "2014 Truth Team", described by the party as "dedicated to cutting through the noise and delivering [...] facts on independence".[25]

In May 2013, Scottish Labour continued its own pro-UK campaign with the launch of United with Labour with the support of former Prime Minister Gordon Brown.[26]

2013 Falkirk Labour Party investigation

In 2013, Labour and Police Scotland launched separate investigations into claims that officials within the Unite union had signed up members to Labour to get their preferred candidate adopted to represent the party in the Falkirk constituency; they were later cleared of any wrongdoing.[27] Subsequent claims were made that key evidence thought to have been retracted, had not been withdrawn, prompting several Falkirk councillors to urge the UK Labour Party leader, Ed Miliband to publish details of the party's internal inquiry or hold a fresh investigation.[27] Speaking on 4 November edition of Good Morning Scotland, Scottish Labour leader Johann Lamont said there was a case for a fresh inquiry, but that Labour does not publish details of its internal investigations.[27][28] Later the same day, Labour said that it would not be reopening the investigation.[29] Miliband subsequently said that a new investigation was unnecessary.[30]

On 13 December 2014, it was announced Jim Murphy had been elected as leader of the party, winning 55.77% of the vote. Kezia Dugdale was elected as deputy leader, winning 62.9% of the vote.[32]

In his victory speech, Murphy said that his election marked a "fresh start" for Scottish Labour: "Scotland is changing and so too is Scottish Labour. I'm ambitious for our party because I'm ambitious for our country".[33][34] He also said that he planned to defeat the SNP in 2016, and that he would use the increased powers being devolved to Holyrood to end poverty and inequality. In her speech, Dugdale said that the party's "focus has to be on the future – a Scottish Labour party that's fighting fit and fighting for our future".[33]

2015 Scottish Labour leadership elections

On 16 May 2015 Jim Murphy resigned as leader effective 13 June 2015; under normal circumstances, Deputy Leader Kezia Dugdale would become acting leader, but former Leader Iain Gray was appointed Acting Leader whilst a leadership and a deputy leadership election are being simultaneously held on account of Dugdale resigning as Deputy Leader to stand for Leader. Dugdale was later elected Leader on 15 August 2015.

^Oliver Wright (10 September 2015). "Labour leadership contest: After 88 days of campaigning, how did Labour's candidates do?". The Independent. Retrieved 11 September 2015. the electorate is divided into three groups: 292,000 members, 148,000 union “affiliates” and 112,000 registered supporters who each paid £3 to take part

^Dan Bloom (25 August 2015). "All four Labour leadership candidates rule out legal fight - despite voter count plummeting by 60,000". Daily Mirror. Retrieved 11 September 2015. total of those who can vote now stands at 550,816 ... The total still eligible to vote are now 292,505 full paid-up members, 147,134 supporters affiliated through the unions and 110,827 who've paid a £3 fee.

^Wolfram Nordsieck. "Parties and Elections in Europe: The database about parliamentary elections and political parties in Europe".

^In addition, the party has 7,790 affiliated supporters (members of trade unions and socialist societies who opted to affiliate) and 3,285 registered supporters, making a total of about 30,000 members and supporters.[4][5]

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